Catholic Lay People Are More Involved Since Vatican II(Exploding the myth)

I am working my way down the blogroll and noted a great post by a Priest in the UK. That blog is Saint Mary Magdalen, Brighton, UK and his post is about Post Vatican II lay involvement. I also note that Father Z has noticed this entry too. Let me excerpt the part where he looks at the past:
THRIVINGIn Brighton 50 years ago there were thriving organisations. The Church was made up of small groups, I am sitting in my office and around me are old framed photographs of the various sporting groups that used to be in the parish: the parish swimming team, boxing team, football team etc. There were obviously plenty of things for young men. In all of them there is a priest involved, then of course there were four priests in the parish, what these pictures show is the Church's involvement with men, it took them seriously, it knew they were going to be the future priests and fathers of families, mangers of buisnesses, trade unionists. Then ordinations in (or at least) from this parish were a regular thing. There are no records but I am told there was here an extremely thriving SVP group, that used to visit the slum housing and a Legion of Mary that used to go parish visiting, from door to door. There was also the Catholic Evidence Guild, I am not sure if they were actually "of the parish", or simply preached on the promenade, "in the parish" during the summer. In the notice books there are references to The Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, the Scouts, the Agnesians, the Altar Guild, the Union of Catholic Mothers, The Catholic Police Guild, the Catholic Nurses Guild etc etc.There was great optimism, in this parish in that period a social worker called Mary Garson together with the parish priest set a group of women to care for those in need, from this, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Grace and Compassion, a religious congregation that is thriving in India and parts of Africa.The Sisters of Grace and Compassion are still in Brighton but of the other organisations none of these exist today, except the SVP, and that seems normal for most parishes. What we have instead are a few small "faith sharing groups" and lay involvement is limited to the finances, Extra-Ordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and readers, in the past there were none of these, there were altar servers and a very proficient choir that sang chant. The sanctuary ministries have replaced the apsotolic ones.

Go to the rest of his entry as he looks what happened after Vatican II. Let me say I am not anti Vatican II. I am anti bad interpretations of Vatican II.

However I find little to disagree with in his post. When I converted I was in College and quite active in Catholic College activities. The Campus ministers were to say the least quite liberal. The Sisters and Nuns were really radical. Every year Catholic College students would go down to Maryhill in Alexandria for a week long "retreat". We were always told tales had the Clergy ran everything and the LAY people were not involved in the "bad ole days" I guess it was my protestant background and actually researching partly my way in the Church but I was quickly not buying it.

Now there is more than bad interpretations of Vatican II and agendas of Clergy and religious at work here. In pre -Vatican II days, at least here in the US, the Parish was indeed the center of social life. This was at a time where there was still some anti Catholicism and the immigrant nature of the Church was still apparent. Times have changed. One radical change is the fact that entire families no longer are born ,live and die in the same neighborhood. Oh there are hints of it. Pre Katrina New Orleans was largely a bastion of that. But that had even been diluted over the years as people moved to the burbs. Still the blogger has an interesting point.